Rena - Beach clean

By Helinor Stead

Inside it was slightly damp. Several days in close confines had amplified my need for fresh air, no matter how strong the likelihood of a solid drenching. Tāwhirimātea must have heard my prayers - the storm had finally abated. In the distance, a sliver of pale blue held enough promise to get me out the door, and whilst the new angle of the shoreline was more workout than easy stroll, my partner & I ambled along the length of Tairua Beach scooping up bits of rubbish here and there. It wasn’t surprising, the debris. Easterlies had been howling for days. The seaweed wrote its own tale of migration in the sand. However, as we got closer to the north end the amount of flotsam increased markedly and by the time we’d got about two-thirds the way up the beach our hands were full. 

We held your typical assortment of trash: scraps of plastic bag, bottle caps, odd ends of fishing line, some kind of foam… half a peg, a sad and deflated fizzy bottle and those tenacious lollipop sticks that litter shores and playgrounds everywhere. But more disturbingly, I was noticing tiny plastic pellets about the size of a peppercorn, scattered about by the receding tide. ‘Rena beads’. Once we saw them we couldn’t see anything but beads and the sheer volume was overwhelming, to say the least. I felt stricken. Cleaning up would take more time than we had that day and so disposing of what we had collected, we wandered home. 

But the Moana was speaking to me. She reminded me of an oft-remembered quote ‘if you walk past it you’re part of the problem’ so I took my heartbreak to Instagram and Facebook, calling on the community to join me for a greater effort on Sunday morning. 

Rugged up against the cold about seventy odd locals and visitors descended on the beach armed with colanders and sieves and buckets and a desire to do right by Māmā Nature. It was quite a sociable couple of hours and with the happy prospect of a bowl of hot chips due to the generosity of Flock Kitchen & Bar, the kids were super enthused as well. We removed pellets by the hundreds. Hidden under skeins of seaweed, easily mistaken for tumbled bit of shell it is a time consuming process. Tucking into fries and warming our bellies with hot chocolates and coffee it felt good to have contributed to something bigger than ourselves. 

Radio New Zealand got in touch. Their article was syndicated by Stuff and the NZ Herald as well. TV One was asking questions. It’s a news story for the times. But for us here in Tairua it’s far more than a news story. This is our home. We play here. Surf here. Swim here. We nourish our families with the kaimoana from these waters. We nourish our souls with the power of this ocean. To our delight, RNZ journalist Ella Stewart seemed to empathise with this immediately and didn’t hesitate to put us in touch with the Astrolabe Community Trust, kaitiaki of the remains of the MV Rena, the perpetrator of the largest maritime environmental disaster in New Zealand waters to date. 

With their Wreck Condition & Debris Plan and the cooperation of a team of environmental scientists, the Trust has instigated a relationship that we hope will have an impact on our local community far greater than that of those pesky beads. 

Keep an eye out for further information on upcoming beach cleans.

We would love to see you there.